Quotes From The Play

Prologue

'Yeah i get all sorts in here'

Tale 1

'even the traffic stops for him when he crosses the road'

Tale 2

'at night she dreams of rainclouds'

Tale 3

'but his past is where its really snowing'

Tale 4

'yesterdays stories that the rain might wash away'

 

My Objectives

Prologue

'Shit jumped a light there"

-  tell Matteo hes jumped a light

- Urgent, reflexive

Tale 1

'mixed race'

- Tell a friend about a boy i saw

- flirty, excited

'and his dad used to hit him'

- Checking i heard that right

- Confused, Solumn

Tale 3

'He wont look you in the eye'

- Convince someone that im right

- Dismissive, Serious

My Characters

Prologue

In the prologue me and Sarah are Matteo's headlights, although we are inanimate objects, the headlights to me are always there through every road and every passenger with the taxi driver. They have seen and heard everything yet they are still stable and reliable.

Tale 1

In tale one my character is that stereotypical teenage girl who spends all her time on her phone texting her friends about boys and gossiping, when i read the line 'and his dad used to hit him' theres a very breif moment where my character realises how serious that is but almost immediately she is back to tweeting and taking selfies.

Tale 3

At the beginning of the tale i am the same girl is was in tale 1 but three or four years later, shes still the same at heart but is now more interested in drinking with her friends.

I then become the 'handyman' and he is quite lazy and alright at his job but dosen't really care about his customers. After scratching his head and looking at his phone he says to his client he can fix it next week and til then they cant use the water. he was born and raised in the east end and lives for the weekends.

When we all start saying our lines and transition to the edge of th stage i see my character as beeing someone who knew jack really well but now has drifted apart after the accident.

Tale 4

In this tale i see myself  as someone in the community watching how this young person is treating this old lady. I'm suprised at how nice and helpful she is being as i picture the 'youths' to be rude and disrespectful

Tale 5

At the beginning of tale 5 i am a woman who has been abused putting on makeup to cover a black eye. She dosent notice the boys moving past her as she is focused on the practical side of her situation not the emotional, at this point its been going on for a while and though she recognises the severity of her situation shes no longer hysterical about it.

Creating Tales 3&4

Tale 3

Tale three is staged with the boys sitting on stools dotted around the stage, we enter the stage as if we were walking into a pub and mill around before leaning back as if downing a pint on 'londons calling'. we then sayb in unsion 'if the east end was my friend' then freeze waiting for the line 'a bit of this a bit of that' after which we approach the audience being handymen while the boys are building the bar from the red stools. when the bar is built Matteo slams his stool down. We then move to sit at the edge of the stage on the three sides. At the line 'whitewashed' a sheet is bulled across the center of the stage which a body (roseby) lies under. Our torchlight, whichuntil now was lighting the bar, is placed onder the sheet at the end of the line 'where the body of a man lies covered in snow'. the body moves out from under the sheet on the line 'the loudmouth routine is just a disguise' and Matteo replaces on the body on the line 'Cos under it all his a lost little boy' at the end of the scene the lights go out.

In this tale i play the character of a young girl going for a night out at the pub. This Character is quite loud but very breif. I then play a handyman. I approach a member of the audience and tell them that both their plumbing and electric are shit and it will take me about a moth to repair it.

The atmosphere of tale three is slightly more naturalistic than tales 1&2 which are quite styilised. There are a lot more improvised pieces and the tale feels quite light until the end. With the use of the londons calling track at the beginning the pub atmosphere is immediately set. Then lighting of the sheet then transitions the piece to become more serious.

Tale 4

Tale four is staged with us all under umbrellas at first in pairs, and then in a huddle low on the ground. we then form the road diagonally across the stage. later on we move to becom aisles of the shop. and then we are sitting casually at the sides of the stage.

In this tale i play a person in the rain, then i am the road while being the commentator for the horse racing. later on i become part of the aisle, and then just a spectator.

Further Questions

Over the past few weeks i think i have developed more confidence in my acting and my decision making, instead of just asking every question that i think of im getting better at taking initiative and working it out. Due our monday lessons i think ive also become better at improvising which is helpful in the breif improvised parts of east end tales. Ive discovered that i can be a lot more mature and professional in lessons than i sometimes am.

Ensemble

To me the word ensemble in theatre means a group of actors acting together, wether a main actor is being supported by an ensemble to create mood or scenery or wether all the lines are said in unison or divided between the actors.

To develop a sucessful ensemble every member of the company has to be foucused and has to have energy because if even one person dosent know what they are doing or dosent do it right it will throw the whole piece off.

My favourite ensemble moment so far has been doing tale 1 with all the girls. it was my favourite moment because we all really worked hard together and were proud of what we were doing, i think we were all quite suprised by how good the piece looked so fast and i personally felt like we were being directed rather than taught which felt nice. when we showed the boys what we had been doing it felt really good to have another group of people acknowledge the merits of the piece and i really felt that we'd reached another level of teamwork. Everyone was really focused and we all helped each other out and felt really comfortable with everyone in the room.

Rehearsing

Thrust Staging

Using thrust staging allows the company to be more creative with their staging, you can more effectivley have more than one thing happening at once it also means you can act more naturally on stage as there is more than one front you dont always have to be facing one direction.

however a disadvantage of thrust staging is that as an actor you have to work harder to make sure that you can be understood from all angles, you also only have one point of entry or exit

As an actor i think i will struggle to keep up tghe energy and intensity required to engange the audience  on all three sides of the stage.

The Prologue

We have staged the prologue with seven groups of four dotted around the stage with the taxi driver sitting down, the two headlights either side of him and the passenger behind him. I think we are staged like this so that we dont as a company focus on one side of the audience, it dosent look as though its aimed in one particular direction. The effect of this is that the stage looks very full busy. the use of torch light in the dark emulates the streetlights in the dark on the roads and is really effective in creating that 'middle of the night drive home' feeling.

Tale 2

My role in tale two is to say the lines 'if the east end was my friend' 'mixed race' 'which is a start' 'and his dad used to hit him' and 'even the traffic stops fro him when he crosses the road'

Tale two has been staged with all the girls sitting in two rows back to back in the middle of the stage, some are on the floor and some on the red stools. as we say our first lines we illuminate our faces with our torchlight and act as if were texting on our phones, after the line 'cause his dad used to smoke' on our lines we stand up and move towards the audience. on the line 'even the traffic stops for him when he crosses the road' we all turn and point our torches to the middle.

These choices have been made to face all three audiences, to make the piece more stylised and to punctuate important lines with movement.

I think the strengths of the piece are definatley the diversity of voices that we all use to deliver our lines and the symbolism of the piece.

To improve the piece we need to get sharper on our lines and movement.

The Landlords Monologue

When chosing a character fro the monologue i chose the landlords character because he was the character i had most developed in my mind and i also decided that instead of going for the wounded abused woman which i would find easier to play i would challenge myself by being a fairly bland male character. I thought this was a good decision because i want to be versatile as an actor and thought stepping out of my comfort zone would be a good plan.  My  monologue follows:

1.65, 1.65's a bit steep for a bloody orange juice, only, i just sold one for that. 1.65. But is a lot? I mean when you fink about it the juice itself cost like 30p a cup, and even if i just sell that one bloody cup i still gotta pay some idiot 6.33 an hour to wash the fucking cups, then you add electricity, that fuckin expensive and gas and water and insurance and maintainence. So yeah, 1.65. sounds alright to me. You know, when i first step foot in this place i was two. Me grandad 'ad just bought it and it was fucking magic ya know, all shiny floors and comfy booths and chairs i couldnt even climb up cause they was so bloody high. and grandad kept all the bottles on the back wall, all different drinks all different colours and i tried to count em but you know i was two so.. When grandad died me dad 'ad it and now me dads 'ad his accident, i guess its mine. he used to say, my old man "this pub is important boy, people come in here and get pissed go 'ome with that lass thats been given 'em the eye all night and then when they have the christenin of the baby they made when they was drunk on my beer they'll come back 'ere after. and one day thell be mariied bring theyre 'ole family and then when they die of liver failure they're 'ole family will come 'ere to remember them" he did have a funny sense of humor but then he'd say this pub is the only constant to 'em. I guess back in 'is day it was the heart of the community but now all its just a mouldy old building with piss warm beer in the barrels and a sick stain on the carpet.

You see, i didn't really want this pub. I wanted to really do somthink wif me life but ma dad said 'son its 'istry' and me old man calls it 'is pride and joy. So I can really say no to that, piss all thier 'family 'istry'. but the east end 'as changed now, we're all lookin over our shoulders when we walk down the street scared 'a getting stabbed for mobile phone. And half the people who walk through my doors are 'alf dead already. They shuffle in sit down and order a pint, none 'a this friendly chat me old man used to 'ave, but then theres this woman, she walks through the door and shes bright behind 'er eyes, proper alive. Then theres this guy, i dont fancy the look of 'im and he's standing near 'er but hes mad. Proper mad then i see shes spilt his drink. so im on me toes bright and alet waiting for it all to kick off, limbering up to break the first fight since '98. and the whole pubs gone quiet, someone must've switched off the music. an were all watching, waiting for sumink to 'appen but just as i think hes hit 'er she cracks a fuckin joke and orders another round. Makes him laugh and ends all the fuss. so now im standing 'ere heart pounding watching the bastard drink his orange juice. So 1.65. sounds alright to me.

end

When staging my monologue my partner suggested i stange it round a chair, and keep flitting about as if i was having a conversation over the bar, i also tried to make the landlord seem like a normal person, not particularly authorititive or menacing. i wanted him to look comfortable but jaded as hed been doing this job for his whole life.

The monologue task helped me understand the play further because i really had to think of what the eastend meant to someone living in it ot just an outsider, i thought through what it was and what it is now, the type of people that would classically be in the pub and the role the pub now played in the community

When watching other peoples monologues i thought rosebys worked really well because she played this crazy scottish woman looking back on how she used to be an activist and the piece was really funny but she also touched on the issue of people doing things to be cool or to fit in as we got the notion that the woman was actually more interested in the drugs and the people than the actual issues.

I also thought eirc performed is monologue really sucessfully he hunched over in a chair smoking and really effectivley embodied his character both physically and with his voice. he also made us feel some sympathy for a character who was depicted as a 'nice guy'

National Theatre Videos

Watching these videos was both educational and interesting, its helpful to see what professional actors are doing to improve their acting and it means we can implement their methods in our acting, for instance watching a video on voice when looking at the 'to be or not to be' speech made me think of what the actual words are doing in a piece of text regardless of their meaning. Thinking about the sounds and rhythm of a speech and how that contributes to the flow flow and the deliverence.

Watching another video on movement i learned not only how a mix of costuming and physical theatre can be incredibly effective in making animalistic pieces but also more about the history of movement in plays. For example Geraldine Stephenson was one of the first movement directors in The York Mystery Plays. Also Litz Pisk looked at using real weight and the imagination when looking at movement in a scene. When creating and rehearsing a role this knowledge will enable me to use other techniques in physical theatre and view my work from different angles.

Tale 6

To look through tale 6 i was put into a group with Connor, Jake and Matteo the words we underlined were:

Landlord

Bastard

Brother

They

Mother

Son

Woman

Man

Man

Woman

Brother

Mum

Mum

Daughter

Mum

Daughter

Dad

Lady

Daughter

I decided to pick the landlord's character to explore. As i felt he was a character that many people made assumptions about but actually may have had a hard life.

After filling in the interior and exterior sheet i had to go a peri lesson but the scene i wouldve explored with my character (the landlord) would have been him going home at the end of a long day to his family  as i feel this would show the other more caring side of a man who spends his day slinging drinks across a bar. I think as a man is his mid-to-late fourties the landlord would be fairly well weathered, with a greyish complexion and endless cough from the cigarettes, and short grey stubble and bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. As well as the consistent cough i would have made him fairly jumpy, years of breaking up bar fights and perhaps some drug abuse would've made him quite paranoid. he would have a grainy voice, deep chuckle and chesty cough. he would be slight but at the same time quite imposing.

Blocking Tale 4

When we came back together to turn our thoughts and research into an interpretation of tale 4 it became apparent that hardly anyone had researched let alone read through the tale. Although i admit i didn't deeply research the tale i was suprised that i was one of the most knowledgeable about the tale. Roseby however had thought more about the deeper meaning of the tale and how the theme of loneliness was presented not only in the tale itself but in the play overall.

We decided to perform the tale, as it was written. We made the protagonist a girl (no gender was specified in the text) and decided that we would 'thought tap' all of the characters as the tale was exploring the preconceptions people in the east end had about certain sections of society (ie young people, old people etc) The young girl walked to to shop complaining about her father in her head when she stumbled across an old lady stuggling to cross the road, the old lady was at first afraid of the youngster but then realising she meant harm was happy to recieve help. As they walked into the shop the shop keeper was suspicious of the pair but resolved that they werent a threat. 

My homework helped me to visually develop what i thought the scene should look like, and therefore how the characters felt in their surroundings, for example wiping the wet hair out of my face or hunching over in order to stay under the imaginary umbrella.. 

As the old lady i hunched my back in the classic way you picture and old persons stance, and shuffled along the road not quite pickng my feet up, i chose to look as though i was leaning my weight on the shopping trolley almost to make it look as though the breif walk to the shops was a challenging and painful experience. in my voice i also tried to emulate the 'cracking paper' that was mentioned in the tale however when i was 'thought tapped' i stood up straight and spoke in my normal voice as i felt though the 'old lady' was frail physically, mentally she still felt young and able.